Climate Change & The EnvironmentDiscuss Coral reef species may adjust to climate change at the General Discussion; Originally Posted by saltwn
Coral reef species may adjust to climate change
now if we can just get marine life ...

now if we can just get marine life to adapt to the oil and chemicals...

If, and that's a big if, man created climate change actually happens, species will either adapt or die out, to be replaced by other species. Same with climate change created by natural conditions. Whch in the end includes man created conditions. We know this because that's what happened in the past.

Coral recovering from bleaching...Great Barrier Reef starts to recover after severe coral bleaching, survey of sites between Cairns and Townsville showsOptimism is rising among scientists that parts of the Great Barrier Reef that were severely bleached over the past two years are making a recovery.

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Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science this month surveyed 14 coral reefs between Cairns and Townsville to see how they fared after being bleached. The institute's Neil Cantin said they were surprised to find the coral had already started to reproduce. "We're finding corals that are showing early signs of reproductive development, really visible eggs that we can see under the naked eye," Dr Cantin said. "[It's] very surprising as previous studies have shown a two-to-three year delay in reproductive activity following bleaching events. "It means they have enough energy, they've recovered the zooxanthellae and the symbiosis and they even have energy to invest in reproduction and egg development."

Nearly two thirds of the Great Barrier Reef was affected by bleaching in 2016 and 2017, killing up to 50 per cent of coral in those parts. Dr Cantin said scientists found eggs at most of the reefs in the Cairns region, including at Arlington Reef and Fitzroy Island. "What it means is the corals along the entire Great Barrier Reef, are survivors that are going to reproduce earlier than expected which could help drive quicker recovery if we don't see another heat stress this summer," he said. "This is a positive news story for a change for the Great Barrier Reef. We're seeing eggs and we hope those eggs will lead to somewhat of a successful spawning season this summer."

Photo: A before and after image of coral bleaching in March 2016 (left) and later dying in May 2016 (right) at Lizard Island.

AIMS researchers will continue to monitor the reefs to assess if it will lead to a successful spawning season. "What we really need to understand now is if these eggs that are produced will mature and lead to viable eggs that can form coral larvae," Dr Cantin said. The mass coral spawning event on the Great Barrier Reef occurs between October and December.

Half of Hawaii’s Coral Reefs Bleached...Scientists: Half of Hawaii’s Coral Reefs BleachedNovember 03, 2017 — Nearly half of Hawaii’s coral reefs were bleached during heat waves in 2014 and 2015 and fisheries close to shore are declining, a group of scientists told state lawmakers.

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The scientists from the Nature Conservancy briefed the lawmakers Thursday about what they called an unprecedented situation for Hawaii’s sea life. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials said 56 percent of the Big Island’s coral were bleached, along with 44 percent along West Maui and 32 percent around Oahu.

Worse to come

The scientists said more severe and frequent bleaching is predicted. “In the 2030s, 30 to 50 percent of the years will have major bleaching events in Hawaii,” said Kuulei Rogers of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. When ocean temperatures rise, coral expel the algae they rely on for food. This causes their skeletons to lose their color and appear “bleached.” Coral can recover if the water cools. But they die if high temperatures persist. Eventually reefs degrade, leaving fish without habitats and coastlines less protected from storm surges.

Fish decline as well

As for Hawaii’s fish, University of Hawaii researchers compiled data for 15 years and found a 90 percent decline in overall catch from the last 100 years, which includes fish such as ulua, moi and oio. “What we found was pretty overwhelming,” University of Hawaii scientist Alan Friedlander said. “About 40 percent of the species will be classified as overfished. The correlations are more people, less fish.” Friedlander suggested expanding marine reserves and said gear restrictions and size limits help, but bag limits and quotas don’t work.

Fish swim over a patch of bleached coral in Hawaii's Kaneohe Bay off the island of Oahu. Nearly half of Hawaii's coral reefs were bleached during heat waves in 2014 and 2015 and fisheries close to shore are declining, a group of scientists told state lawmakers.

Those who fish argued against more regulations. “If the fishermen don’t stand up and come down here and fight for fisherman’s rights now, we’ll lose more than we can possibly ever imagine,” said Makani Christensen of the Hunting, Farming and Fishing Association.

New US Report on Climate Change Offers Dire WarningsNovember 03, 2017 - The U.S. government on Friday released a report on climate change that said there was "no convincing alternative explanation" for global warming besides human causes.

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The National Climate Assessment, which the government is mandated by law to publish every four years, said Friday that climate change is almost entirely driven by human action. It warns that sea levels could rise by nearly 2.5 meters by the year 2100. It lists a number of incidents of damage across the United States that it attributes to the rise of global temperature by 1 degree Celsius since 1900. It said the U.S. was already experiencing increasing temperatures, precipitation levels and numbers of wildfires; that more than 25 U.S. coastal cities were already experiencing flooding; and that there was no precedent in history with which these meteorological changes could be compared.

A woman, at right, takes photos of the flooded banks of the Seine in Paris. Scientists said at the time that man-made climate change had nearly doubled the likelihood of April 2016's devastating French flooding.

But, it said, there is "very high confidence" that the rate of climate change will depend on the amount of greenhouse gases released globally over the next few decades. The report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, an interagency unit that coordinates and integrates research on environmental changes, runs counter to the position on climate change taken by the current U.S administration, including that of the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Trump, Perry, Pruitt have doubts

President Donald Trump, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and EPA head Scott Pruitt have all questioned how much human activity has contributed to climate change. The president has announced the United States will leave the Paris climate agreement that would obligate the U.S. to cut its overall greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent by 2025, compared with 2005 levels.

One of the study authors, climate scientist Robert Kopp of Rutgers University, told The Washington Post he thought the report was "basically the most comprehensive climate science report in the world right now." In response to Friday's release, White House principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah noted a line in the report that said there was "uncertainty in the sensitivity of Earth's climate to emissions. The climate has changed and is always changing."

What really worries these settled science scientists is that the grant money might well dry up. That would be a disaster.

This has always been the most stupid of all claims regardless of whether we're addressing climatologists or marine biologists. The science and the funding for the science is not based upon the conclusions reached by the science. The funding is based upon the desire to know and understand our natural world. If there was absolutely "nothing wrong" the funding would be identical to what it is today.

We still know very little overall about the oceans. Every deep water exploration discovers new species that have never been seen before. There's so muck left to learn that any decrease in funding for any reason seems unlikely. Oddly, if the reefs weren't dying there would be more for science to learn as opposed to less.

__________________"I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it's dirty on the inside." Donald Trump

"I always had a rule, if the White House is dirty on the inside, it's dirty on the outside." ShivaTD

Based upon the corruption, brutality, inhumanity, immorality, dishonesty, and incompetence of the Trump administration the White House is the dirtiest house in America and there's no known cleanser that with remove the stains of the Trump Administration.

To have their agenda, the conservatives have to construct a reality in which nearly all the scientist in a given field are wrong. Because their findings are in opposition to the right wing agenda, or profit in other words. So how do they do this...hum..oh yea, all these scientist are bought off by leebruls that hate Merica. All the scientist that disagree with their agenda are simply incompetent and stupid or being bought off by environmentalist.

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Originally Posted by ShivaTD

This has always been the most stupid of all claims regardless of whether we're addressing climatologists or marine biologists. The science and the funding for the science is not based upon the conclusions reached by the science. The funding is based upon the desire to know and understand our natural world. If there was absolutely "nothing wrong" the funding would be identical to what it is today.

We still know very little overall about the oceans. Every deep water exploration discovers new species that have never been seen before. There's so muck left to learn that any decrease in funding for any reason seems unlikely. Oddly, if the reefs weren't dying there would be more for science to learn as opposed to less.

Project they hope could restore damaged ecosystems around the world...Coral transplant raises hopes for Barrier ReefMon, Nov 27, 2017 - Coral bred in one part of the Great Barrier Reef was successfully transplanted into another area, Australian scientists said yesterday, in a project they hope could restore damaged ecosystems around the world.

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In a trial at the reef’s Heron Island off Australia’s east coast, the researchers late last year collected large amount of coral spawn and eggs, grew them into larvae and then transplanted them into areas of damaged reef. When they returned eight months later, they found juvenile coral that had survived and grown, aided by underwater mesh tanks. “The success of this new research not only applies to the Great Barrier Reef, but has potential global significance,” lead researcher Peter Harrison of Southern Cross University said. “It shows we can start to restore and repair damaged coral populations where the natural supply of coral larvae has been compromised.”

Harrison said his mass larval-restoration approach contrasts with the “coral gardening” method of breaking up healthy coral and sticking healthy branches on reefs in the hope they will regrow, or growing coral in nurseries before transplantation. He was optimistic his approach, which was successfully trialed earlier in the Philippines in an area of reef highly degraded by blast fishing, could help reefs recover on a larger scale. “The results are very promising and our work shows that adding higher densities of coral larvae leads to higher numbers of successful coral recruits,” he said.

The Great Barrier Reef, the largest living structure on Earth, is reeling from an unprecedented second-straight year of coral bleaching, because of warming sea temperatures linked to climate change. David Wachenfeld, chief scientist of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority that manages the area, said there was a need for such efforts amid the accelerating effects of climate change. “The success of these first trials is encouraging — the next challenge is to build this into broader scale technology that is going to make a difference to the reef as a whole,” Wachenfeld said.